Obama speech lost in translation

Many of the people most interested in what President Barack Obama had to say about surveillance reform Friday were watching from thousands of miles away, far beyond American borders.

Their verdict — at least, based on early international reaction — was unimpressed. Foreign officials who’ve been engaged in these issues overseas say what Obama said, and what he didn’t, left them concerned that he won’t follow through with much that matters — and that some of what he’s proposed may lead to still more problems.

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And while they were glad to see Obama finally addressing a topic he’s promised to for months, they say the changes look to them too modest in scope, leaving most international citizens with no more clarity about their own standing under American surveillance regulations than they had before the speech.

Obama framed American data collection as an essential tool for the security of Americans and their allies that needed to be addressed in light of the revelations and criticisms over the past year to rebuild confidence overseas.

“Just as we balance security and privacy at home, our global leadership demands that we balance our security requirements against our need to maintain the trust and cooperation among people and leaders around the world,” Obama said.

The European response could be summed up in one word: “And?”

“We don’t expect him to go into great detail in a speech like this,” said Claude Moraes, a British Labor member of the European Parliament who’s leading the investigation into the NSA leaks. “The concern is that while it’s very good on rhetoric, will it end with any real change for non-U.S. actors?”

The larger point for many liberal Europeans is that what Obama really needed to do was explain to the world what the American government’s view is of what the real threats are, and how the privacy and civil liberties trade-offs can truly be said to be worth extensive data collection, either in terms of cost or security.

“What I’ve heard so far, I’m not terribly impressed. It seems some changes are made, but they don’t touch the fundamentals. There will still be mass surveillance, and the safeguards are tightened a little bit, but not dramatically,” said Sophie in’t Veld, a Dutch member of the European Parliament who’s a member of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe who also serves on the body’s NSA inquiry. “I can’t even say it’s disappointing, because that would imply I had high expectations, which is not the case.”

The presidential directive Obama announced Friday sought to outline more clearly what American surveillance programs do — and what they don’t.

Counter-intelligence, counter-terrorism, protection of American forces and pursuing international criminals are all fine, the directive says, but only with now more clearly outlined safeguards: the NSA won’t indiscriminately review data, will not collect data for the purposes of suppressing dissent, will not target people for surveillance based on their ethnic or religious background, and will not use the data collected to give a competitive advantage for American companies.

Those safeguards, for now, apply to American citizens only. But now Obama is asking Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Attorney General Eric Holder to develop similar safeguards for foreign citizens, which would also include more detail on the duration that the government can retain information and restrictions on its use.

Obama also addressed one of the most contentious issues to come out of the surveillance revelations: the NSA’s monitoring of the communications of foreign leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. The Brazilian surveillance included eavesdropping on conversations at Brazilian embassies and the state-owned oil corporation.

Both Merkel and Rousseff have expressed outrage over the revelations. In September, Rousseff canceled a planned state visit to Washington and, speaking just ahead of Obama at the United Nations General Assembly, attacked U.S. surveillance-gathering programs from the podium, saying, “Without the right of privacy, there is no real freedom of speech or freedom of opinion, and so there is no actual democracy,” adding that without respecting sovereignty, “there is no basis for proper relations among nations.”

Obama made no promises Friday to stop spying. That’s the way of the world, he said, and the American efforts will continue “in the same way that the intelligence services of every other nation does. We will not apologize simply because our services may be more effective.”

But “given the understandable attention that this issue has received, I have made clear to the intelligence community that unless there is a compelling national security purpose, we will not monitor the communications of heads of state and government of our close friends and allies,” Obama said.